Disciplining Your Toddler, Preschooler, and Young Child Introduction

This topic center covers parenting and child development of preschool children (early childhood aged 3 to 7. For a complete review of the theories of child development upon which this article is based, please visit our Child and Adolescent Development topic center. For coverage of child development and parenting topics applicable to infant children (ages 0-2) please visit our Infant Parenting and Child Development topic center.

A core part of a parent's job description involves taking responsibility for raising kids so that they will grow to become responsible, healthy, and capable adults. Part of this task requires providing for children's basic needs. The other crucial part of the parent's task is to teach children how to take care of their own needs and how to develop judgment skills so they can make good choices as they move toward adulthood. Parents teach these important skills by providing discipline.

Often, parents use the words, "discipline" and "punishment" interchangeably. Some people don't think there's a difference. However, these words do not really have the same meaning. The word "discipline" comes from the root word "disciple," which means "to teach." To "punish" means to inflict pain or loss (e.g., taking away something) upon someone because of an unacceptable action or behavior. There are many ways to teach someone right from wrong that do not involve punishment.

In this article, we primarily focus on how parents can apply effective and safe discipline strategies as a means of helping children to learn how to make good choices. Research suggests that positive discipline strategies are a more useful means of teaching children how to make appropriate choices than are more negative punishment-oriented strategies. This article is organized with our other articles concerning Early Childhood (covering an age span between 2 and 7 years old), however, we are primarily focused here on describing positive discipline methods useful for working with preschool-aged children aged 5 or younger. A future article will cover discipline techniques appropriate for school-aged children and teenagers.